cause she renders with excellent art an appeal so very simple that anybody can understand it. It is really the same appeal that an outcast puppy turns up to the stranger who finds him in a corner. It is irresistible. It is done with that helpless glance upward to what is strong and above it. But Charlie Chaplin, perhaps, has never had his full measure of tribute, except from those who crowd the picture palaces to see him. The critics who measure serious acting have never, to our knowledge, told us that we must on no account miss Charlie Chaplin.

Yet we declare that Charlie Chaplin is a great artist. There is no music-hall comedian for whom we would exchange an evening with him. The appeal of the cinema is a new one, and it is being used now to find dividends for a vast amount of newly invested and highly speculative capital. Its promoters take no risks. They make their appeal as broad as possible, and so they think it better to give us horse-play rather than comedy. They provide Charlie Chaplin with plenty of horse-play, but they cannot hide the fact that they are using a wonderful actor and comedian for that purpose. Once you have seen him, the sprite who seems native to that world which is the quivering round of light on a screen, you know you have got to see him again. This is genius. Charlie's is a grotesque and pathetic little figure, its apparel an absurd misfit, and its firm and undaunted gravity before all the punishments of Fate is more than mere comedy; it is the exhilarating, unconscious defiance of the gods by one destined to failure which has made some of the famous comic figures of humanity also the most tragic ones. For most of us fail, though we aim at some ideal or other; and secretly we know we are failures. These grotesques the greatest of all was Don Quixote are typical of all who are

worth their salt, but they amuse others by their consistent inability to get it. Something tells us that, after all, failure does not matter very much, and so we can afford a laugh at these figures of fun, as we laugh at ourselves and our disappointment at another undeserved frustration.

Naturally, when first we were authoritatively ordered to go and enjoy Charlie Chaplin, we remembered we had heard that sort of thing before; asked where he was to be seen; and learned that it was in heated darkness and the smell of peppermint. That was the place where a lantern showed men clothed in sheepskin trousers and guns galloping faster than express trains to get a doll for a child who could not die happy without one. The child's face, to show she was dying, was enlarged in one picture, and stared at us lugubriously for an intolerable time. That place had no use for sweetness. It used only modern coal-tar products and glucose. But no sooner had Charlie Chaplin stepped into the popular round of light (have you ever seen him merely walk in shadow show?) and had given us one quick glance, than we were his. His feet, his hat, his priceless legs, his set and sad but resolute face, the determinism (all was foreordained) of his absurd movements, fascinated us. It never seemed to matter what he was doing, so long as it was something. He might be boxing with heavyweights, working as a pawnbroker's assistant, trying, as a hungry and moneyless man in a restaurant, to pick up a dollar that was set malignantly in the floor. Whatever it was, it was the absurdity and pathos of the serious human creature trying to outwit impersonal forces that were certain to smother it in the end. And if to convey that humorous idea, and its following sense of melancholy, is not great art, then we are all wrong, even about Don Quixote.

The Poet's Wife

HER Son was determined to ally himself with a woman of whom she could not approve. The woman was common, loud, without delicacy of any kind. She possessed, it was true, a fierce energy and a coarse beauty of form that might appeal to a savage. But he was not a savage. He was a high-strung, sensitive creature. And he had been permanently crippled. His mother withdrew in bitter disappointment.

She went to live by herself at a quiet country place. He wrote at intervals as if nothing untoward had happened. He sent her verses he had always ¿been in the habit of sending her verses. He told her he thought of trying a poultry farm.

One day the coarse woman appeared again. She said, 'What a long walk it is from the station! Tired me, even.'

'May I ask . . . ?'

'Of course you may ask. Look here, I'm your daughter-in-law.'

'I thought you might be.'

'Felix wanted someone to look after him. He said he would wait till you came round. I said "Nonsense, you might be a hell of a time doing that." So we toddled off and did the trick. That's why I'm here.'

'I can send you back to the station.' 'Eh?'

'I mean, that you need not have the fatigue of walking.' 'Very kind.'

'But I am not going to
'Right-O. Let's have tea.'

The woman talked at tea. 'Felix takes quite an interest in cocks and hens. Funny! You would laugh to see him hobbling up and down his old orchard. On a slope, you know, and good trees so he says. I'm bored to

death half the time. But he is a gentle sort of bird. He 'll reconcile me. And, then, I'll have another domestic occupation by-and-bye. See?'

'Does Felix suffer much?'

'You may well ask. I can't think why they performed that damned operation at the Pensions' Hospital. It's done no good. Bally piece of shell somewhere still, I think. My God, he sits tight and hangs on to my arm till I'm bruised. Still, there it is.'

'He sends me his verses.'

'Oh, yes. He's a poet all right. He tells the naked truth about life, does Master Felix. No, I don't mean anything nasty. He's got too sweet a mind. He's just simple and direct. Oh, yes, he's a poet. And I'm his wife.' 'I am Felix's mother. I should know.

'Oh, yes, you should.'

'You infer that I do not?' 'Not a bit.'

'Do you love my son?'

'Love him? I've told you. Don't you thrill at being a grandma? You must n't be put off. You ought to have your share in your own son's child. You'd feel horrid about it if you stayed here and never saw him- or her. Which do you think it will be? My God, I am interested... Don't be put off. Swallow me for the kid's sake. Felix must swallow a lot. But, then, you see, he can grip me as hard as he likes when he's in pain. And, bless you, I can lift him and carry him upstairs. I can do anything for him. I'm not squeamish at all. So he swallows what there is to swallow for the sake of the rest.'

She stood up. She was a formidable figure of a woman. There was a smile upon her face as if she gloried in her strength. Then, swiftly, abruptly, she took Felix's mother in her arms and said, 'Don't cry, old dear. We shall get on very well.'

THE Sources whence the great Alexandre Dumas drew the immortal series of novels, Les Trois Mousquetaires, Vingt Ans Après, and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, are not to be approached in a spirit of detraction. Historical romance depends, after all, on history, and the degree of indebtedness becomes a small matter when compared with the merit of treatment. Dumas may have rifled his authorities with a rapacious hand; he may have set the laws of time and space at defiance in dealing with the downfall of Charles I, and have converted Condé into a Court functionary of Louis XIV when he was actually in the service of Spain. But he invariably manufactured a fine fabric out of his homespun materials. What is more, Dumas' historical personages are essentially conceived in the spirit of historical justice. His Louis XIII and Richelieu come much nearer reality than the corresponding figures in Alfred de Vigny's Cinq Mars; he gives us the real Anne of Austria, more or less of the real Mazarin, and certainly the real Louis XIV of the golden prime. He was fortunate in having to help him a collaborator of genuine learning in Auguste Maquet; and when the dramatic version of Les Mousquetaires was produced, the unexpected announcement of Maquet as part-author was no more than an act of proper gratitude. Still the vitalizing force in the whole achievement was Dumas' own.

For the backbone of Les Trois Mousquetaires, Dumas, or Maquet as his assistant, took the so-called Mé

moires de Monsieur d'Artagnan.* Their author, Courtilz de Sandras, was an old hand at the literary vamp. Thus we have from him, Mémoires de M. de B., secrétaire de M. de C. de R.; initials defying identification, but suggesting all sorts of mysteries. His Life of Turenne purports to have been written by Du Buisson, captain of the regiment of Verdelin, a creature entirely of Courtilz's imagination. But his favorite trick was to take a person recently dead, and to envelop him in adventures, authentic if possible, and when that source that source ran dry, in escapades characteristic of his times. By way of background to his hero, he interpolated chapters on public events, written in a gossiping, anecdotal manner, and showing a surprising familiarity with the utterances of kings and ministers, even when delivered in the closest secrecy. In this style Courtilz perpetuated some memoirs of Richelieu and Mazarin by M. le C. de R., obviously the Comte de Rochefort, who, next to Father Joseph, was the elder Cardinal's best-known familiar, and who figures of course in Les Trois Mousquetaires. His masterpiece in artifice, if not in audacity, was the Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, which appeared in 1702, twenty-nine years after their alleged author had fallen at Maestricht.

The real d'Artagnan was, as Browning would have said, a person of some importance in his day. He was Charles

*An English translation of these Memoirs by Mr. Ralph Nevill was published in 1898-99.

de, Batz-Castelmore, son of Bertrand de Batz, seigneur of Castelmore, and of Françoise de Montesquiou. His father belonged to the smaller and invariably indigent nobility of Gascony; and his mother being of higher lineage, he assumed the territorial surname of d'Artagnan, which distinguished the younger branch of her house. "They say of me,' Courtilz makes him remark, 'that I am not a d'Artagnan, except on the female side, and that I am really a Castelmore.' An elder brother, who kept to the name of Castelmore, died in 1712, Governor of Navarreins, and if Saint-Simon is to be believed, over a hundred years old. Contemporary writers naturally do not concern themselves with d'Artagnan's beginnings, but there is no reason for discrediting the statement of Courtilz that he entered the Musqueteers through the influence of their captain, de Tréville, a fellow Gascon. Whatever his fortunes under Louis XIII and Richelieu, or Richelieu and Louis XIII, may have been, he was well regarded by Mazarin during the Regency of Anne of Austria. Mme. de Motteville unceremoniously terms him 'one of the Cardinal's creatures'; and though Courtilz probably embroiders his facts, Mazarin seems to have sent d'Artagnan on secret missions, and, as was his wont, to have been mightily chary in rewarding him either with promotion

Thus, when Louis XIV came to exercise his first great act of authority, the arrest of Nicholas Fouquet, the profligate Superintendent of Finance, in 1661, it was to his trusty d'Artagnan, still a lieutenant only, that he had recourse. There are several versions of the story, and Dumas, with a novelist's license, exaggerates them all in Le Vicomte de Bragelonne. The gray horse on which Fouquet is said to have tried to escape from Nantes and d'Artagnan's pursuit on the black one are unhistoric. Even the sagacious Mme. de Motteville seems to have been misled about an attempted exchange of carriages and a flight by a winding road. Though the stroke had to be postponed for several days because d'Artagnan had an attack of fever, Fouquet made no resistance, and d'Artagnan escorted him as far as Amboise, protecting him by the way from hostile demonstrations.*

Fouquet once caught, had to be caged, and d'Artagnan was entrusted with his keeping at Vincennes, whence he was transferred to the Bastille. We can all well believe that he performed his duties most carefully. The disgraced man had many sympathizers, and among them was Mme. de Sévigné. She went masked, she tells us,† with several ladies, to a house commanding a view of the arsenal.

I saw him coming from afar. M. d'Artagnan was by his side; fifty musqueteers thirty or forty paces behind him. He seemed as though in a dream. For my own part, when I perceived him, my legs trembled, and my heart beat so hard that I felt overcome. As he drew near us to enter his cell, M. d'Artagnan nudged him and told him we were there. So he bowed to us.

That is like d'Artagnan, always courteous, even where an enemy was concerned. His wearisome guardianship

*The official account of Fouquet's arrest is to be found in the Appendix to Saint-Simon's Mémoires, vol. xii.

tIn a letter to Pompone, dated November 27, 1664. Lettres, i. 451 (edition of 1862).

ended in December, 1664, when he escorted Fouquet to Pignerol, lending him furs for the crossing of the Alps, with Saint-Mars, who had taken part in his arrest, as his permanent custodian.

D'Artagnan it was who, in 1671, ten years after the arrest of Fouquet, escorted another prisoner, his fellow Gascon, the Duc de Lauzun, to Pignerol. Compromised through his own eccentricities, the jealousy of Louvois, the Minister, and the cupidity of Mme. de Montespan, the favorite of Louis XIV was thunderstruck when the blow fell, though he was probably not unaware of its origin. Lauzun would then have been the husband of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La Grande Mademoiselle), the King's cousin, had he not perversely insisted that the marriage should be celebrated at the King's Mass, and so give the princes of the blood time to pour deterrent remonstrances into the royal ear.

From Mademoiselle's slipshod but amusing Mémoires we learn that d'Artagnan, while studiously polite, neglected no precautions.

With the company of Musqueteers, he took M. de Lauzun to Pignerol; he put into the coach with him one of his nephews, who was an officer in the Guards' regiment, and Maupertuis, ensign of Musqueteers, who never left him. They were very civil to him, but extremely vigilant in looking after him.*

The journey over, and Lauzun consigned to Pignerol, where, in spite of the Argus-eyed Saint-Mars, he succeeded in communicating with Fouquet through the flue of a chimney, first 'the little d'Artagnan,' and then d'Artagnan himself took furtive occasions to give their news to the broken-hearted Mademoiselle. The uncle assured her that he admired the spirit of M. de Lauzun, whose servant he had been before his misfortune; and that even if

Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier (Petitot 45, p. 336).

he had not been his servant on his own account, he would have become so through the honor in which Lauzun was held by his acquaintances. D'Artagnan continued that he had left Lauzun in good health, in so far as a man could be who was banished from his King, and that Lauzun had talked so many times and in such a moving way of the honor and regard in which he held the royal person, that he had been much touched. Mademoiselle asked if these words had been repeated to his Majesty. D'Artagnan replied, Yes; and that he had nothing more to say to her except that Lauzun 'loved all he ought to love; that his heart was full of nothing else, and that he felt his absence from those dear to him acutely.' He added immediately afterward, 'He has given me no message; he knew that it was not right that I should undertake a commission of that sort.'

This eminently discreet and yet heartening information was very gratifying to Mademoiselle. She had, besides, a particular regard for d'Artag

nan,

who was, she considered, a man of very great merit, an honest man and faithful to his friends. His conduct, she thought, was the more ereditable because he had quarreled with Lauzun at the battle of Hesdin, and had failed to accept Lauzun's explanation that he was merely obeying the King's commands when he came to cross-purposes with d'Artagnan. They had not spoken for two years, and reconciliation had only been effected fifteen days before Lauzun's arrest, after d'Artagnan had heard that his enemy, despite their difference, persisted in speaking well of him.

The King himself had confirmed out of his own mouth these instances of Lauzun's generosity, when he gave d'Artagnan the command to take him to Pignerol; it was, Mademoiselle re